So Many Islands

by Nicholas Laughlin

  I overheard Mummy telling Daddy in low tones one evening that after the Plundering she’d noticed marks across Uncle’s back that looked like a mass of slugs. I carried this image with me as I started to help Uncle with the flower farm, no longer running to his house and shouting, ‘Police’ in case I startled him.

  I began to feel different after the Plundering, as if the things I wanted would be harder to achieve. I felt like the position I often came in at sports – second place. And I was angry and sad.

  When I ran, though, I was sure and free. At school sports, I made the final of the eighty-metre dash. Mummy, Daddy and Uncle had all come to see me. Even though the pasture was filled with dung I decided to run barefoot – the faster runners always did. I was put in the outside lane, farthest from my parents. Four other under-ten girls, friends normally but enemies for the next minute, were lined up, too. I closed my eyes and thought of the day of the Plundering. When Mr Greaves shouted, ‘Go!’ I ran to get help for Uncle. I ran across the knee-deep grass and jumped over a young man dressed in a bright blue cotton shirt sleeping off a night of alcohol. I continued running after I’d passed the chalky white finish line, after Mr Greaves screamed, ‘Stop!’ I kept running until help arrived for Uncle. But he didn’t need it. He was inside Ms Rebecca’s kitchen, resisting her effort to get him to drink a cup of Earl Grey tea, though he did eat two slices of coconut bread.

  Then I fell. I slowly turned onto my back and, standing over me, like a shadow, were my friends, Mr Greaves, and Mummy and Daddy. ‘Why you running as if you couldn’t stop?’ Daddy asked. He looked confused.

  ‘She already won the race but still pelting round! Like a horse at the Garrison,’ one of my friends said. ‘She almost as fast as a horse.’

  ‘I won?’

  ‘Of course you win,’ Daddy said.

  ‘You feel OK?’ Mummy said, kneeling beside me.

  ‘Yes, please. I won!’

  They lifted me gently to my feet, and I saw Uncle coming slowly towards me, shading his eyes from the white sunlight. He took my hand in his, bent down, smiled and whispered: ‘One-one blow does kill old cow.’ And this time I understood.

  Plaine-Verte

  Sabah Carrim

  Mauritius

  My scalp is itchy.

  My mother is telling me that I got a proposal from a friend’s relative’s cousin-in-law. His name is Mustapha. Mustapha Lalloo.

  The name makes me laugh. Lalloo? Must have been ‘lull-loo’ before the British renamed them. I say it more to myself, because I know she doesn’t care.

  ‘Lull-loo’ in Urdu means stupid.

  She glares at me. Be serious, Aisha! It is a good family. They have money. The boy’s father has a government job. He works in Lopital civil.

  But I just turned sixteen! And besides, this is not the first time I got a proposal. Why should I take it seriously?

  Because your father is interested in this one. He spoke to Dadi and Chacha Amid earlier. He is still on the phone, telling the family, asking if it is okay.

  Why should he ask them? Anyway – what about my studies? I want to go to university!

  University? How much more you want to study? You wanted to do your O-levels, we let you. Then you said you wanted to do your A-levels, we did not say anything. And over there in that university, boys and girls study together in one class. Look at your cousin Hasnah. She is twenty-two and already has four kids. By the time she is forty, her children will be big, and it will be their turn to have children, and she will be able to relax and enjoy her life and her grandchildren. At forty! Imagine!

  My scalp is itchy again, but I ignore it.

  I think of school, of my teachers, and my friends in our blue, black and white checkered knee-length uniforms. What will they say if they hear about my engagement? I think of the articulate and pretty Miss Shameem, who teaches us French literature. She who has been speaking to us about women’s rights, telling us how we should not be reduced to the life of Thérèse Desqueyroux, unhappy, trapped, miserable because of a marriage. She likes me a lot. What will she think? Everyone will lose interest in me. They will think I am backward, from a backward family. They will know it is because I live in Plaine-Verte.

  * * *

  I am in the large compound of my college where everyone is gathered for the morning assembly. I am at the head of my line because I arrived first. My scalp is itchy. It is as though two thousand red ants, high on Lucozade, are nipping it.

  Sister Colette is reciting ‘Je vous salue Marie,’ the ‘Hail Mary,’ with the Christians among the six-hundred girls in the assembly. The rest of us are quiet. I know the words by heart, but I am trying to block them out by reciting a surah from the Quran. I don’t want to jinx the prayer I made this morning. I need Allah badly right now. I want Him to stop the engagement from happening.

  I notice a girl next to my row who looks Christian, but is quiet like me. I peer at her, trying to figure out why. I realise I am being rude but she looks at me and smiles. She nudges me softly as we are walking to our classrooms and says she is a Jehovah’s Witness.

  What is that? I ask.

  Different from what they believe, she says. We believe in God, think Jesus is the son, but don’t allow blood transfusions.

  * * *

  Zoli tifi, beautiful girl. What is your name? says the old Khala who stops me on the road in Plaine-Verte, right in front of Lotel Bismillah.

  I tell her.

  How old are you?

  Sixteen.

  Ann bon. Oh, you have any sisters or cousins who are older, but who look like you?

  No.

  Ann bon. Oh, who is your father? What is your family name?

  My father is Abdul Rashid Bakarally.

  Give me his phone number.

  I don’t ask why.

  I walk into Lotel Bismillah. There are a few shabby tables and chairs inside, and men who are drinking dité avion – aeroplane tea, so called because of the way the tea is poured from one glass to another a few times until it cools down and froths at the top. I ask the man with the topi and the long beard for some of the sweet sticky sootar fin he sells. Everyone is staring at me, and it makes me swear that I will not come here again, but I know that the desire for sootar fin is stronger than that.

  When I get home, I drop my bag on the sofa, peel off the sticky black leggings under my blue, black and white checkered uniform, and remove the scarf covering my hair. I undo the rubber band around the brown wrapper of my sootar fin, tear the thin white wires of the whirly vermicelli and begin eating it. My mother does not look up from the beef liver she is slicing on the dining table. Wash your hands first, she says. I told you not to go to Bismillah. It is not good for a girl to be seen on her own. What will people say?

  Every time she plunges the blade into the dark-red liver, blood spurts out and stains her pale yellow shalwar kameez. She does not seem to care. It is the same shalwar kameez she wears every day except on Fridays when she takes a shower.

  Ma, a Khala stopped me on the road earlier. She asked for Papa’s phone number.

  Another proposal? she exclaims, raising the knife and rubbing her runny nose with the back of her hand. You got two in one week, Mashallah! I should tell your chaachi. She will be jealous. She has been worried about Zulekha. Eighteen and not even one proposal! Maybe because she is so dark. I told her to wash her face with soap four times a day, morning, midday, afternoon and night, but …

  * * *

  It is already 7.25 am and I have to leave in a few minutes if I want to be on time for the morning assembly. I am at the dining table, having breakfast. It still stinks of raw, uncooked beef liver in here.

  I am taking turns to eat buttered bread with banana. There is a specific way of eating it that I think is very Mauritian. So you hold your baguette in the right hand and a banana in the left. Then you take turns in taking a bite of each. You must make sure you’ve chewed the bread long enough before you eat the banana. Don’t ask me when. It is something w
e instinctively know. I tried teaching it to my friend at school who was from La Reunion. I think she thought I was weird. Then, there are other factors that matter: the banana must reveal just enough of the flesh while you hold it and retain its peel – there is some sort of pleasure, pleasure I can’t explain, in peeling it gradually – and the butter must be salty and must have melted in the crumb.

  My father walks in with a stack of marked papers.

  Aisha, how many times have I told you not to …

  I drop the banana on the plate. We are not supposed to eat with our left hand. It is dirty. It is used to clean our backside. I don’t get it, to be frank. Times have changed. We have soap now. But they tell me I am stubborn and that I don’t listen.

  Mustapha will visit us on Eid, says my father. He is coming with the family. We will do la bousse dou – it means ‘sweeten the mouth.’ We do it to celebrate.

  This is it. It will happen after all. What about my prayer to Allah? Why didn’t it work?

  Papa, I am not sure I want to get mar– But I can’t finish. Through a glare, my mother reminds me of the advice she gave me the night before: that certain things should not be discussed with a father. Like the three Ps: periods, panties and proposals. Whatever needs to be discussed, she said, has to be discussed with her. Then she will decide whether to broach it with my father.

  Papa, you want your tea now? she asks, to distract him from what I nearly said.

  She calls him Papa, like me. It is a sign of respect for the man of the house.

  What did you call him before I was born, I once asked her.

  Nothing, she said and then frowned. Nothing. I never had to call him.

  * * *

  I am in class, sitting next to Ameera. She is from Rue Labourdonnais in Port Louis, which is at the other end of Plaine-Verte. She is telling me that her sister-in-law Muznah is possessed – that is why she is cheating on her husband and sleeping around with other women. My scalp is itchy again. I force my finger under the white hijab I am wearing and just manage to scratch it. I get temporary relief.

  She is saying it is the neighbours who sent the jinn, out of jealousy. The logic is that the male jinn in Muznah’s body is controlling her and getting her to sleep with women.

  You mean she is lesbian, I say.

  No, no, what lesbian? Doesn’t exist. The westerners have invented that concept. They don’t believe in jinns, you see, so they can’t explain when someone is gay. It is the jinn – it is male – so it likes sex – a lot – some jinns just like sex.

  So what happened?

  We got some religious people to come home and recite the Quran.

  Did it work?

  At first, yes. Muznah gave up her job for a while to recover. It was all okay. But when she got back to work, she went back to doing it.

  Then?

  The Imam says the mistake Muznah made was that she went back to work. Women should not work.

  I have a better solution, I say.

  What?

  The jinn clearly likes Muznah and won’t leave, right? Well, get your brother to be possessed by a female jinn and Muznah can keep hers.

  She raises an eyebrow. What do you mean, she asks.

  I explain and kill the joke but she is a sport and slaps me playfully on the shoulder and lets out a fake laugh.

  Let’s go and hang out in Happy World later, I say. I can spare half an hour. I will cook up an excuse. I will tell my mother your period stained your uniform, and I had to help you.

  No, she says. I can’t. I have to go to the beautician. She points at her bare hairy legs and then at my covered ones. You are lucky you don’t need to wax.

  It is not a compliment. I look at my covered legs. She knows it is because I am from Plaine-Verte. I feel small.

  Disabled.

  Handicapped.

  * * *

  Plaine-Verte is literally ‘Green-Plain’ – green because it is the colour of Muslims. This place used to be called Camps Lascars. Apparently ‘Lascar’ originates from an Arabic word meaning ‘soldier.’

  I don’t think there is anything soldier-like about the people who live here. Yes, there were people like Cehl Meeah who were in the news, fought to be part of the government and pushed for Shariah to be adopted by Parliament for Muslims. But like all the others, they did nothing but spoil the reputation of this place.

  Now, there are rumours about what happens here. My friend’s dentist told her that we are so backward, that on Bakr Eid, the people get really excited when they see lorries carrying cattle for slaughter. The children run after them on the streets, barefooted, with bamboo sticks in their hands, waiting for the vehicle to stop, the cow or goat to get off, and pamper the animal by patting it, feeding it (although some pull its tail too, I was told) and watch in awe when its legs are tied, when it is pushed to the ground, its throat is slit and the blood gushes out in a pit dug in the mud.

  Some even believe that we have our own laws here, and stone people when they commit crimes. How ridiculous.

  * * *

  I can smell the fragance of the boiled milk with vermicelli and nuts from the kitchen. We call it sheer khurma and make it only for Eid and Bakr Eid.

  My father just got back from the masjid for the Eid prayer. He does not go to the one right next to the house, even if it is the oldest masjid in Mauritius – some issues with the Muslims there being misguided and not doing it the right way. Apparently they give too much importance to the Prophet, and the right way is to give more importance to Allah because Allah comes first. All so complicated. Thank God women are not allowed into the masjid and don’t have to deal with that.

  Mustapha will come for lunch, says my father. Of course, with his family.

  I am not happy. I look at the small dining table in our house. None of the chairs are in good condition. One creaks every time you move, one leans forward when you lean forward, one has a backrest where you can’t rest your back, one has a cushion with a big hole so that you feel your bottom literally sinking if you don’t hold yourself up.

  But we don’t have enough space, I say. It’s okay, he replies, we will manage. You and Mustapha can sit on the sofa while we do the talking.

  Stop scratching your scalp like that! cries my mother, they will think you have lip-pou – lice. It is the way she says the word, transferring all the misery she has ever felt in her life as a housewife into that single word. I remove my finger quickly.

  Here, she says gently. Take this.

  She hands me a bottle of Nivea deodorant. Spray it on your hair. It will stop the itching.

  * * *

  Mustapha and his family are finally home. I watch him closely. His father is fat, round, and has hair growing right out of his earlobes like two antennas. The son is an exact replica, but everything is not as intense and accentuated – yet. He keeps looking at me without saying a word and smiles. He smiles so much that it starts to worry me. I detect something lecherous about it.

  The parents interview me for a while. They ask when is my birthdate, whether I like children, whether I still go to the madrassa for lessons. They smile at all my answers and glance at each other with a look that says: Approve! Approve! Then they ask whether I can read the Quran, because they are wondering if I would be interested in teaching the young Muslim kids in their neighbourhood after I get married.

  I wish they would ask me what is my favourite subject at school, which book I have read the most and how many times and why, what I do to be first in class all the time, which university I want to go to – even if my father can’t afford to send me abroad and can at most, pay the local university fees – and what career I plan to take up when I grow older.

  * * *

  It is settled. I am to get married soon after I finish my A-level exams.

  Before the results, they specified, we don’t want to wait too long.

  I look at Miss Munira, standing in front of the blackboard, still trying to teach us after a year how to pronounce Apple – At-tuffa-ha
– and Orange – Bur-tu-khala – in the right husky Arabic accent. She is always dressed in a black abaya, and covers her face with a niqaab when she steps out of the class. There are one or two male teachers among the staff, that’s why. My classmates call her Ninja behind her back. Nobody takes her seriously for some reason. They laugh in class, speak loudly to each other while she is teaching, test their skills of sarcasm when they have to answer her. Probably because the marks for this subject will not affect the final outcome. Probably because some teachers are just easy to bully.

  No.

  Maybe it has nothing to do with the marks not affecting the outcome. Because they also bully Miss Sujatha who is from India – she teaches us English literature. She always wears a sari and for some reason her bra strap always pokes out of her sari blouse.

  I have never bullied either. Always thought it was disrespectful, and then all the teachers are especially nice to me because I do well in their subjects. But what does it matter now? I am engaged. I will be married after my exams, whether I pass or fail.

  The itching has grown worse.

  When I get home, I don’t tackle my leggings, but my hijab.

  I rush to my mother who is in the bedroom, dabbing baby powder on her cheeks. I tell her to look at my scalp because it’s burning.

  Ugh, white patches, disgusting, she says.

  Damn. I have to go and see a doctor, I reply. It is probably fungus.

  Don’t say ‘damn.’ What doctor? No need to waste money. Let me get you something.

  She leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later with a plastic orange bowl containing yoghurt, lemon and its seeds.

  It will make the itch go, she says. Rub it in your scalp and wash it after a few days. Zulekha said she had the same problem last time. It’s the weather.

  A few days! But I have school tomorrow!

  If you don’t wait long enough, it will not work. And anyway, who will smell you? Here, take this, she says, and hands me the bottle of Nivea deodorant.